Sunday, February 10, 2008

AGENT IN QUERYLAND

Maybe it’s the weather, maybe it’s something else, but many of the emailed queries I’ve been reading in the past couple of days have been quite good. I’ve invited a couple of authors to send us partials and am looking forward to what they will send.

I did what no agent should do last month. I fell in love with a query. Why is this a bad idea? Well, for one thing you really can’t get a sense of someone’s mastery of writing in an emailed query. For another, it’s just a QUERY, for God’s sake! But, I fell in love with the plot line and the first few sentences of the first chapter which the author included. So I whisked off a quick, “Please send more” response. Then I forgot about it….for awhile. But wouldn’t you know, the one query I fall in love with is the one whose partial never came. I waited some more and finally, for the first time ever, wrote back to the author and asked where the partial was.

Poor author responded that he/she had had a crisis of confidence and assorted health problems. Author assured me that my interest in his/her book was enough to get him/her moving again. The author told me that the partial will come one of these days.

I hope so. I still can’t get that query out of my mind. Am I out of my mind?

About Us

We launched our literary agency in 2006. Kae was publicity director at Rodale before launching KT Public Relations in 1993. Jon, a corporate veteran and frustrated literati, joined the public relations business in 1995 after getting his Masters in library science.
So, here we are, running two parallel publishing-based businesses. It’s an exciting time—doing what we love and learning something new each day. Stay tuned. This is a work in progress and we invite your participation.